


After

by Paganpunk2



Category: Father Brown (2013)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Couch Cuddles, Crying, Drug Reference (No Use), Emotionally Repressed, First Kiss, First Night Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Major Character Injury, Male Homosexuality, Mistakes, New Relationship, Past Relationship(s), Period-Typical Homophobia, Secrets, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Cuddles, Trust, conflictions, tea and comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28903131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paganpunk2/pseuds/Paganpunk2
Summary: After the bust of a late-night smuggling run goes wrong, Sullivan has some hard questions for Sid.  The answers will surprise them both.
Relationships: Sid Carter/Inspector Sullivan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53
Collections: Early Days





	1. Respite

After the shooting had stopped, Sid sat slumped against a tree and watched the bulk of the Kembleford police force go through their paces. One constable swept the clearing by torchlight, searching for evidence and lighting the world up with a flashbulb when he found it; two others guarded a trio of handcuffed men who had been left laying on their bellies to discourage shenanigans; a fourth was applying pressure to the wounded leg of a fifth. Sergeant Goodfellow was circulating, his breath puffing out in front of him in the cold as he kept tabs on everything and awaited instructions. In the shadows at the edge of all this activity, several dark lumps marked where the corpses had fallen.

Sid had seen it all before, to some extent. The biggest difference this time around was the sheer number of bullets that had been loosed. A murderer taking potshots was as regular as a church fair, but this had been an honest-to-God, Al Capone-esque shootout. And it was all his fault.

But he hadn’t had a choice. He really, really hadn’t.

The Sergeant was coming his way. “Still all right, Mr. Carter?”

“Yeah.” He was sore everywhere, and his left arm was starting to sting a bit, but so what? There were plenty of people in a worse state than he was tonight, and more who would be in pain tomorrow once names were released.

“You’re lucky you weren’t hurt in all of that,” Goodfellow observed. “It was pretty thick for a minute or two there.”

“...Yeah.” Sid wondered how many dozens of rounds had been let off between one side of the glade and the other. He’d been too focused on trying to melt into the forest floor to count them.

Goodfellow’s torch beam was pointed carefully away, but Sid had been sitting in the dark long enough now that he could make out his face anyway. The Sergeant was frowning slightly, peering down as if he wasn’t sure what to do with him. “Constable Bremmer will be all right,” he ventured when his gaze hit Sid’s red-stained hands. “I’m not a doctor, of course, but the bleeding’s mostly stopped, and it doesn’t look like it hit the bone.”

“Yeah...” He’d thought he’d timed it right. Bremmer wasn’t one of Sid’s pub associates like some of the men who were out and about tonight, but that wasn’t the point. None of the Kembleford lads were supposed to get hurt. Ideally no one at all would have been hurt, just arrested. That, at least, had been the plan.

“Looks like the Inspector’s arrived,” said the Sergeant. Sure enough, several more torch beams had appeared near where the detainees were being held. “I’d better head over there. You’ll stay here, though, won't you? I’m sure he’d like to talk to you personally.”

“...Yeah...” He didn’t want to. All Sid wanted to do was get as far away from this place as he could before he broke down. He wasn’t sure how much longer he had before that happened, before everything overwhelmed him and the truth about his role in tonight’s incident came pouring out of him in an ugly, snotty torrent of tears.

When that moment inevitably hit, it was essential that he be within range of Father Brown’s paternal smile and sturdy shoulder. The priest had sent more than a few troubled glances his way over the past few weeks, as Sid had been privately working out what he was going to do. More than once he’d nearly spilled it all, desperate as he was for the older man’s sage guidance. It would have been a hell of a risk, though, not just to him but to the Father, and that was the only reason why he’d held back. Gambling with their lives when they were already in the middle of a crisis together was one thing, but it was something else to drag him into a problem of Sid’s, and Sid alone’s, own making.

Montague House would work, as well, if it felt safer to stay off the roads and cut through the fields once he was out of here. Sid hated the thought of burdening Lady F. with something as dreadful as this thing that he’d done, but he knew she’d be able to handle it. He knew, too, that her brand of comforting worked wonders on emotional trauma. She’d let him sniffle his sorrows out with his head in her lap before, and on both occasions he had passed straight into dreamless and healing sleep once his tale was told. That was the kind of rest he wanted to lose himself in tonight.

The Sergeant had hiked his frown up into a concerned but appreciative smile. “Thanks, Sid.”

Sid blinked hard as Goodfellow left him. Goodfellow _was_ one that Sid had a relaxed pint or two with on the regular, but he was also sensitive to his professional position. The constables who favored The Red Lion slipped up and called Sid Sid around the station all the time, but the stripes on Goodfellow’s sleeves immediately turned him into Mr. Carter for the Sergeant. For him to address Sid like he just had conveyed all the warmth of a bear hug.

So, Sid waited when he would have preferred to run. A couple of the figures that had emerged from the trees split off and went straight to where Bremmer was being tended to. Good. Sid was too far away to make out who they were, but even if they weren’t medically trained they should be able to take the wounded Constable out of here and find a doctor. The third new arrival started to pull one of the night’s catch to his feet in preparation for the walk down to the road. And the fourth...

The tiny crescent of moon in the sky above gave almost no light, but Sid didn’t need it in order to recognize the fourth figure. Broad shoulders that tapered down into a trim waist and slim hips; dark hair, perfectly coiffed despite the hour; an air of perpetual mild annoyance. He’d have known Sullivan anytime, anywhere, because once he’d stopped trying to quash the feelings that flooded him every time someone said the Inspector's name Sid had developed a sixth sense for the man.

And how would that go, when Sullivan had finished making his round of the crime scene with Sergeant Goodfellow and closed in on Sid? Father Brown and Lady F. might not really understand the decisions that had led to tonight, but they would accept them, forgive him, and move on. Mrs. McCarthy was sure to dive straight into a lecture when she heard the story, but her fretting tirade would likely be followed up the next day by an apologetic batch of scones. Until recently, those had been the only three opinions in the world that Sid really cared about. The addition of Sullivan to his list had proven challenging, because there didn’t seem to be anything Sid could ever do to gain his approval short of getting the hell out of his jurisdiction.

The utter collapse of this evening’s plan was only going to make their already tense situation worse. Whatever half-truths Sid told to try and continue masking his involvement with the dead and the handcuffed, Sullivan was going to throw the book at him. He didn’t mind that so much, strangely – though he wasn’t looking forward to it, he deserved some sort of punishment for what he’d done – but he did mind the way he could feel whatever little credit he might have had with the Inspector slipping irretrievably away.

“Carter.”

Flat. Impassive. Sid had never met anyone else who managed to freeze and boil at the same time. It was like Sullivan had two separate tanks of emotion inside him, one a vat of icy seawater, the other a constantly roiling kettle. There was a mixing valve in there somewhere, but it never seemed to be used to make anything other than a vaguely disdainful sort of neutrality. Occasionally there would be a jerk towards one extreme or the other, but it was generally short-lived and unpleasant. Sid had fixed plenty of taps with the same problem in his time. After tonight, however, there was no way he’d get the chance to try and smooth out Sullivan’s settings. The odds hadn’t been great to begin with; now he’d rank them as equal with his chances of becoming Pope.

Sid met the Inspector’s gaze wordlessly. Sullivan’s expression was as aloof as his voice had been, save for a tiny vertical line between his eyebrows. He looked, Sid thought, like the angel in a painting he’d once seen of Adam and Eve being evicted from Eden. For a moment his brain scrambled for the angel’s name, but – sorry, Father – it escaped him. All he could remember was that he had definitely held a higher rank than Detective Inspector.

“Can you get us to the road without going through the clearing?” When Sid just blinked up at him, bemused, Sullivan went on. “I assume you’d rather that the three men I’m detaining didn’t realize you were here tonight.”

“...Oh.” Right. That was the entire reason why he was over here, sitting in the dark by himself, forgoing even the comfort of a cigarette. If anyone had to know that he’d been involved in this incident, Sid wanted it to be the people who wouldn’t straight up murder him for it. Self-preservation aside, he could think of nothing that would yank Father Brown into this mess faster than that. “...Yeah.”

“Yes you don’t want to be seen, or yes you can take us through the woods?”

“Both.”

Sullivan gestured to the trees at Sid’s back. “Well, then...?”

They moved into the deeper blackness of the forest without further words. Sid, his eyes set to the moon’s low glow and familiar with this stretch of woods besides, ghosted through it quietly despite half of his attention being elsewhere. Sullivan crashed along in his wake, his torch beam bouncing wildly every time he stumbled. “...Stop,” Sid finally sighed, coming to a halt. “Turn off your light.”

“Why?”

There was no suspicion underlining the question. Its absence made Sid’s lower lip tremble. Sullivan had looked and sounded so austere back in the clearing, but he had yet to say anything that was actually dismissive or biting. For Sullivan, and particularly for Sullivan in a situation like this one, he was being unusually nice. “‘Cause if you give yourself a minute to adjust, you’ll see better without it, and you won’t trip as much. You’re gonna start a rumor about aliens or something, the way you’re going.”

“That’s exactly what I need to come out of this,” Sullivan groused. “Even _more_ paperwork.” A moment later, the full blanket of the night enveloped them. “Keep going. I can see well enough.”

Sullivan progressed with slightly less ruckus after that. Sid tried to help by taking him along a route that was a little longer but more open. When they stepped out onto the road verge, Sid stopped once more. Turning left would deliver him to where he’d hidden his flatbed. Based on where Sullivan had come into the clearing, the police were parked to the right and around a curve. And they still hadn’t spoken about what had happened. “...What now?”

The Inspector was busy brushing bits of debris from his suit. He lifted one foot to see its shoe better, then let out a disgusted huff at the dirt that had marred the polish job. “Go right. No, wait...”

Sid swallowed hard as Sullivan’s hand closed around his elbow. He’d been wondering when this part would come. Bowing his head, he put his wrists together at the small of his back and waited.

“What are you-?” Sullivan sounded confused. When he spoke again, there was something like pity lurking between the words. “...Carter, I’m not going to handcuff you.”

“...You’re not?” That was a first. As grateful as Sid was, though, it only muddled everything further.

“No. If you were going to run, you would have already done it. And it isn’t as if I don’t know where you’d go for help.”

It was a fair point. Sid had had every opportunity to bolt tonight. Even if he hadn’t dared to take off from a clearing full of officers, the Inspector’s ineptitude once they were alone in the dark woods had given him a wide-open chance.

Sullivan’s hand was still on his elbow. He wasn't squeezing hard, but the ache in Sid’s forearm intensified anyway. This brief recognition of pain was swept away as Sullivan stepped past and put himself between the driving surface and the trees. “If anything comes along the road, get back into the forest and stay there until it’s gone.”

Sid knew he shouldn’t press his luck. The best thing to do was keep his mouth shut and start walking. But nothing was going the way it was supposed to tonight, not even this bit, and he needed some sort of clarity. “...Why are you doing this?”

The Inspector stared at him for a moment, his mouth pinched. Then he released Sid’s elbow with a tiny shove. “We’ll talk in the car. I’m taking you home.”


	2. Détente

After they pulled up in front of the police cottage, it was Sid who broke the silence. _“...Your_ home.”

It was the first thing either of them had said since they’d started their trek up the quiet country lane. Once he’d verified that none of the trio that his men had arrested were sitting in the other cars or about to exit the woods, Sullivan had hustled the younger man into the passenger seat of the Wolseley. The only additional delay to their departure had been the quick dive that he’d made into the boot for a blanket. He would have sworn that he’d detected nervousness in the way Sid had taken it from his hand, as if he thought it was a trick of some sort.

Now Sullivan glanced over at him. After his initial hesitation, Sid had unfolded the plain gray wool and wrapped it around his shoulders. He’d burrowed into it over the course of the ride and was hidden from throat to thigh. His wan face reflected a bit of the blanket’s color – or at least, the Inspector sincerely hoped that there was no other reason for him to look quite as unwell as he did – leaving the bloodied hand he was holding it closed with to offer the only contrast. There was no way to describe him in this moment, Sullivan thought with a gulp, besides vulnerable.

“The station will be busy for the rest of the night,” he answered. “And we still need to talk.”

“Thought you wanted to do that in the car.” Jesus, even his lips looked pallid. “When we came into town, I figured you’d drop me at the presbytery.”

Maybe that would have been best. Sullivan could have let Father Brown deal with the immediate aftermath of whatever it was that had happened tonight, then gone round tomorrow to get the information he needed. There was still time to make that the way his night ended, in fact. All he had to do was start the car again, take a five-minute detour, and then return home and crawl back into bed until morning.

The only problem was that he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Sleep had been difficult for him lately, so difficult that tonight he had resorted to taking a dose of sleeping powder before he closed his eyes. The powder was the reason why he’d been late to the scene of the shootout. He’d slept through twenty minutes of his phone ringing non-stop, and then through a further five minutes of Constable Greer pounding on his front door. Once he was awake, he’d been so bleary that it had taken him twice as long as usual to get ready. Of all the nights to be incapacitated, why had it had to be this one?

Sid was the answer. Sullivan knew himself well enough to tell when he was deeply attracted to someone. He had to know himself that well, because it was the only way he could make sure that he didn’t let the secret slip via some unguarded word or action. Over the years he’d grown skilled at assessing his attraction, determining whether anything beyond masturbatory visions could be done with it, and moving forward accordingly. But Sid had jammed up his system simply by existing, and Sullivan had spent the months since he’d come to Kembleford trying to put things back in order.

The difficulty, he’d recently realized, was that this time he’d fallen for a criminal. In the past it had always been upstanding sorts, men who lived the way Sullivan tried to. Schoolmates, then fellow soldiers, then brother officers. True, there had been that sizzling weeklong fling with the ridiculously attractive baker outside of Amiens, but Sullivan had never believed the rumors that the man was a Nazi collaborator right up until the Allied army was at his door. He’d seemed too basically good-hearted for that to be possible.

Sid fit the same mold. Under his smirks and taunts and disregard for the law resided a thoroughly decent human being. Father Brown saw that, as did Mrs. McCarthy, Lady Felicia, and, if the eyes that rolled every time Sullivan slapped cuffs on him were any indicator, the vast majority of Kembleford and its neighboring communities. But unlike Jean-Philippe, Sid had a proven history of misdeeds. This was the wall that Sullivan kept slamming into every time he tried to picture himself with the man he was so hopelessly enamored of.

The man who, if he was perfectly honest with himself, he didn’t want to dump on someone else’s doorstep. Sullivan wanted the answers to his questions, yes, and he also wanted something to hold his attention through the rest of the night now that he knew he wouldn’t be getting any more rest. Above all, though, he wanted to be the one who brewed the tea that put a little color back into Sid’s cheeks and provided the listening ear for whatever tale he had to tell about tonight. And that was yet another wrinkle in his overall dilemma, because as much as he’d enjoyed being with others in the past, he’d never felt this irresistible urge to take care of any of them.

“It’s nearly midnight,” he pointed out. “Won’t Father Brown already be asleep?”

“He’s gonna wake up no matter what time I come in.”

“So it won’t make a difference if we talk first.” A fleeting moue told Sullivan that Sid had no answer to that. “...Come inside, Carter. Come inside, have a cup of tea, and we’ll talk. Then I’ll take you to the presbytery, or up to Lady Felicia’s, or...” He stopped himself before he listed Sid’s caravan. For some reason, he didn’t want him to be alone through the small hours of this night. “Or wherever you want to go.”

There it was again, that same leery sidewise glance that Sid had given him back along the road. The words that accompanied it were the same as they had been then, too. “...Why are you doing this?”

“Doing _what?”_

“Being so bloody nice to me. Is this a new method for breaking people, or what?”

Sullivan didn’t know what to say. Had he really been so awful to Sid over the months of their acquaintance as to make him think that any gesture of kindness was a ruse? He’d hardly been friendly, it was true, but he’d hardly been friendly to anyone. Civil, yes. Friendly, no. Not really. He wasn’t looking to make a life here, although he grew less disgruntled by the prospect with every day that passed. Maybe, he thought with a frown, he should make a little bit more of an effort, not just towards Sid but in general. If nothing else, it might save him from being looked askance at the next time he offered someone a cup of tea.

It was hard, though, when he’d spent his entire adult life keeping his feelings under lock and key. The stress, too, of tonight, of this week, of every week, really, since he’d come to this oddly bloodthirsty little village, was straining his patience. “Would you please just come inside already?” He winced as soon as he heard himself. At least he’d said please, but still. Not the greatest beginning in the world.

Sid sighed as if he’d been struggling against quicksand for hours and thought it was about time to just give up and let it take him. “...Yeah. Sure. Whatever you want, Inspector.”

In the kitchen, Sullivan waved Sid towards the table and then turned away to prepare their tea. He needed to make up ground, he knew, after his false start outside. “Sergeant Goodfellow told me that you were the first person to help Constable Bremmer after he was hit.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“He also said that there was still shooting going on when you popped out of hiding and ran to him.”

“I dunno about that. I just saw him fall.”

False modesty was not something that Sullivan suspected Sid had a habit of. If he said he hadn’t noticed that he was putting himself in danger by rushing to Bremmer’s assistance, he was probably telling the truth. Again, there was that blasted morality that seemed to clash with every piece of paper in his police files. “What about the others who fell?” Sullivan hazarded as he closed a cabinet. “You didn’t see them?”

“What others? Who else on our side was hurt?!”

If Sullivan hadn’t been in the act of filling the kettle with water and therefore already standing still, his pause would have given away how much he gleaned from that single honest outburst. _Our_ side. Not only had Sid not been working with the men who had cut each other down in the old assart, but he’d cast himself on the side of the police. This, much to Sullivan’s relief, matched up with something else the Sergeant had told him.

“No one,” he assured. “The only other...injuries...were amongst the smugglers. Anyway, I already know why you didn’t run to any of them.”

“...You do?”

“Yes. The Sergeant said that the person who called in earlier this evening and tipped them off about the group refused to give their name. He said it sounded like they were disguising their voice, and doing a rather decent job of it, too.” Sullivan let a beat pass. “He also said that he knows you well enough to have recognized that it was you calling despite your otherwise passable effort.”

“...Oh.”

The teapot was ready to receive the water once it was hot, and the cups were ready for the tea once that was done. There was nothing else to occupy Sullivan’s hands while he waited for the kettle’s squeal, but he sensed that keeping his back to Sid might encourage him to continue talking. Instead of turning around, he wetted a dishcloth and began to wipe down his already spotless counters.

“You are a reliably close-mouthed person when you want to be, Carter,” he remarked as he worked. “I say that not only because I’ve seen you keep a secret on more than one occasion, but because you have a reputation on both the right and the wrong sides of the law as someone who can be trusted with information. I don’t believe that you would risk that reputation unless you had a very good reason for doing so.” He paused again, but Sid said nothing. “...I need to know what they were moving tonight.”

“The lads didn’t find it?”

“Not by the time we left, no. They’re going to keep a watch on overnight and do a wider sweep in the morning, but those woods are dense. It would help if we knew what we were looking for.”

Sid drew a deep, watery breath. The sound, so close to a whimper, made Sullivan yearn to drop his cleaning act and go to him. He forced his feet to stay where they were. Progress was being made; if Sid trusted him enough to answer this question now, he might trust him enough to accept a little comfort later.

“It’s...it’s heroin. And they weren‘t just moving it through; some of it – not much, at least not yet, but some – would have stayed here. In Kembleford.”

Heroin. In Kembleford. Jesus Christ. The stuff had become a problem in the cities over the past few years, Sullivan knew, but out here? He’d thought that a relative lack of major drug issues was one of the few silver linings inherent in a rural posting like his. “...How delightful.”

He continued to swipe non-existent crumbs from the countertop as he tried to process this new angle. The kettle went off; he filled the teapot, then resumed his pointless motions. Sid said nothing more, though Sullivan heard him shift in his chair once or twice. Minutes passed, marked only by the ticking of the hob under the kettle as it cooled. After a longer than usual steep, Sullivan poured out and prepared two cups of strong, dark liquid. Taking one up with both hands, he finally turned back to the table.

Sid had let the blanket fall from his shoulders and trail onto the floor. He’d shrugged off his jacket, too, and was resting his left forearm on the surface before him. His brow had furrowed, and he was chewing on half of his lower lip in puzzlement as he prodded at the edges of the deep, seeping gash that ran for several inches below his elbow.

Sullivan barely noticed when his own fingers clenched and snapped the handle from the teacup he was holding. It didn’t register, either, when the rest of the cup and its saucer jolted out of his other hand and hit the floor. “Sid...you’ve been shot.”


	3. Pressure

After the teacup shattered, Sid raised his head. He hadn’t missed the fact that Sullivan had just addressed him by his first name. He’d been waiting too long for that to happen to let the moment escape his attention, regardless of what else was going on. And it would have been impossible for anyone to mistake the emotions warring their way back and forth in the Inspector’s eyes. Worry. Dismay. Fear. The sight of the graze just below the bend in his elbow had loosened the mixing valve, it seemed, and let this new combination through. Huh.

Sullivan shook himself, then turned back to the counter and picked up the second cup of tea. He set it down in front of Sid and moved past him towards the back of the cottage. “...Drink this. I’ll be right back. We need to get that cleaned up.”

Sid’s arm might have unnumbed itself to broadcast its injury, but the rest of him was still cold. He’d only shed layers because a glance downward in the warm light of the kitchen had made him realize that a lot of the blood on his left hand wasn’t Constable Bremmer’s. So, even though the tea was going to be wrong – the cup that had been dropped, he assumed, had been intended for him – he took a sip.

It wasn’t wrong. In fact, it was perfect.

Sullivan was back already, carrying gauze and hydrogen peroxide. He set these down on the table, then met Sid’s uncertain gaze. “...What?”

“How d’you know how I take my tea?”

A blush rose into the Inspector’s cheeks. The sight of it gave Sid a sense of profound satisfaction that clashed with everything else he was feeling. If he could cause that sort of reaction – never mind the broken teacup – then maybe Sullivan didn’t loathe him quite as much as Sid had always thought that he did.

But then, Sullivan still didn’t know the full story of the night. If he ever found out, any positivity between them was sure to be well and truly destroyed. After that, the other man would probably be glad to learn that he’d been shot.

“I’ve seen Sergeant Goodfellow make you about a hundred cups when you’ve been...ah...at the station,” Sullivan explained. _In the cells_ hung unspoken between them. “...And it also happens that we take it the same way.”

So it didn’t matter if the first cup had been meant for him, because they’d been identical all along. “That’s funny,” Sid murmured. Then he dropped his eyes and took another sip.

He didn’t look up again until Sullivan grasped his fingers and pulled his arm out straight across the table. The Inspector’s expression was focused as he dipped a fresh cloth into some of the hot water that had been left in the kettle and dabbed at the edge of the gash. Gone were the rough swipes that he’d used on the counters; his touch, not just near the injury but where he still held onto Sid’s fingers, preventing him from pulling back, was surprisingly gentle. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he queried softly. “The Sergeant told me you weren’t hurt.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Really?” Mocking incredulity, but there was a trace of admiration beneath it. “You didn’t know you’d been shot?”

“Never happened before, has it? And it’s not that bad. And...” And there had been a dozen more important things in his mind at the time, things like Constable Bremmer’s wound and how abysmally wrong tonight’s effort to undo an old and serious error had gone.

Sullivan’s gaze flickered over his face and seemed to read his secrecy. Sid held his breath, expecting the mood to switch from conversation to interrogation. “...And you‘d already been out in the cold for a while,” the Inspector made allowances for him instead. “You were probably somewhat chilled. And I doubt you expected to walk into a gunfight, so you were also distracted.”

Neither of those observations were technically wrong. “...Yeah. I mean, I started to feel it a bit afterwards, but I just thought I’d scraped it on something when I dropped after the...after everything started.”

“That’s understandable.” Sullivan slid a low, empty bowl under Sid’s arm. “This is probably going to hurt,” he said, reaching for the hydrogen peroxide. Then he wrapped his fingers around Sid’s wrist, clearly anticipating more resistance than the few twitches that had already occurred. The weight and warmth of his hand, the brush of his skin, was just like the tea had been – perfect. Their gazes met and held for the space of a heartbeat. “...Try not to pull away.”

It did hurt, and much more than it had before. “Fucking _hell_ ,” Sid hissed. His hand curled into a fist beneath Sullivan’s, whose fingers tightened in response. Normally Sid would have assumed that the squeeze was intended solely to keep him from jerking his arm free. But nothing was what it ought to have been tonight, and he wanted to believe that the extra pressure was meant to be commiserating rather than utilitarian.

“...I’m sorry,” Sullivan apologized as the foaming died away. “But it had to be done.” He clasped Sid’s hand one more time, then released him and picked up the gauze. “You need to have this looked at tomorrow. There was a fair amount of dirt in it. It could still get infected.”

Sid was willing to pay whatever dues he owed for tonight’s events, but he didn’t particularly want to make amends via sepsis and amputation. “Yeah. Right.”

When the grisly rip in his flesh had disappeared under a clean white wrapping, Sullivan did something unexpected. Rather than getting up to clear his supplies from the table or to re-make the cup of tea he hadn’t had the opportunity to drink, he took hold of Sid’s arm again and began to clean off the blood that had dried below the wound. Sid could easily have mopped himself up, but he didn’t object to the attention. Who was he to shut down a rare act of sincere and open kindness by such an extremely reserved man? Besides, he liked the way their hands fit together, and the intensity in Sullivan’s eyes. It was almost enough to let him forget why he was bloody in the first place.

“Why don’t you go into the sitting room,” the Inspector suggested when the rag was pale rose in color and even Sid’s cuticles had been scrubbed, “and I’ll make some more tea and bring it in.”

Sid was torn. The last half-hour had been dream-like. He’d had plenty of fantasies about tea and handholding (for a start) in the police cottage, but nothing in Sullivan’s demeanor before now had suggested that his daydream could ever become reality. He didn’t want this part of the evening to end, even if it failed to escalate to anything more amorous than a couple of tired blokes having a cuppa.

But if he stayed, they would talk, and if they talked, Sullivan would have questions. Sullivan would have questions, and Sid would have to answer them, not just because he no longer had the energy to dissemble but because he needed to purge himself of all the things he’d been holding in. And if he purged to the Inspector, every little advance that they’d made towards one another tonight would be wiped out. Would Sullivan ever be so nice to anyone again if Sid burned him like that?

Sullivan took the decision out of his hands before he could figure out how to answer. “It’s not really a question, Sid,” he added when several seconds had passed without a response. “Our talk was interrupted. We need to finish it.”

Oh. So information was still at the top of Sullivan’s mind despite the genuine goodwill he’d shown this evening. Well, at least he’d called him Sid again. That was something to hold onto, no matter how short-lived the habit turned out to be. “...Right.”

It was too bad, really, that he didn’t seem to have any other injuries that were minded to suddenly make themselves known. Sid knew he should be thankful to even be alive, let alone so relatively unscathed, but as he gathered the blanket, pushed himself up from the table, and trudged deeper into the cottage, he couldn’t manage the feat.

The sitting room was dusky, lit only by the two table lamps that Sullivan had apparently snapped on when he’d passed through earlier in his quest for bandages. Sid briefly surveyed his options. The lone armchair, with its settled-in seat cushion and neatly bookmarked history of the Napoleonic Wars alongside, was clearly Sullivan’s nest. Neither end of the sofa looked like it was ever used, though, so Sid occupied the more distant and shadowy corner and sank stiffly back, cradling his now-throbbing arm.

He could still slip out. There was another door besides the one he’d come through, one that let into the front hall, and Sullivan wasn’t exactly making efforts to be silent as he cleaned up the kitchen and brewed fresh tea. It wasn’t that far to the presbytery, even if he went round by the street instead of cutting through back gardens. If he could spill the worst stuff to the Father first, they’d be able to figure out together just how much to tell the Inspector later.

Except, Sid acknowledged morosely, Sullivan would probably follow him. If he didn’t catch up to him outside, he wouldn’t hesitate to demand entry to the presbytery. And even if for some reason he did let Sid escape for the time being, running would damage their fragile new – cordiality? Friendship? Whatever this was – just as irreparably as telling the whole truth.

There was no way to win. It seemed to Sid that the only choice he had left to make tonight was how, exactly, he wanted to break his own heart.

The Inspector’s appearance in the kitchen doorway with a tray in his hands didn’t ease the pain of that realization any. Sid could get used to this, to dim light, the warm hum of the radiator, and a domestically-inclined Sullivan. Just the two of them, safely ensconced behind the shuttered windows of one of the few dwellings that even the most long-nosed of Kembleford’s gossipmongers would think twice about trying to peek into. Quiet. Comfortable. Progressing, however slowly. Damn it...

“Thanks,” he whispered as he was handed a cup.

Sullivan eyed him. “I have some aspirin, if you want it. I’m afraid I don’t keep anything stronger than that in the house.”

“It’s not that bad.” It hurt like hell, actually, but Sid didn’t want to dull the pain. Maybe, he thought desperately, he could use it as a focus, something to keep his mind off his other, deeper aches and let him somehow evade Sullivan’s questions while also answering them satisfactorily. As impossible as it would likely prove to be, he had to at least try to save the look they’d shared at the table, the sparking brush of their hands, this precious moment of tranquility.

The Inspector dropped into his chair with an easy sort of looseness that Sid had never witnessed in him before. He sampled his tea, closing his eyes as he did so. Sid shivered. Seeing Sullivan relax at home was like watching a chrysalis crack open. The stiff protective shell fell away, revealing a glimmer of the lightness and life buried deep inside. There had been one or two hints of this underlying personality before now – the day of Audrey MacMurray’s death (a shame, that, when with a little more time she might well have taken an easy first in the race for best washroom liaison of Sid’s life) at the auto track leapt to mind – but it had never been on such full view before. Not to him, at least, and he suspected not to anyone else in Kembleford, either.

“I didn’t say it earlier,” Sullivan said, “but I appreciate your response to Constable Bremmer’s injury. Sergeant Goodfellow told me that if you hadn’t gone to him no one would have realized you were there at all. You could have just vanished, but you didn’t. You chose to help.”

Sid gulped. He didn’t have to say anything to that – it was just a comment, a thanks, and not even a probing one – but words fell out of his mouth anyway. “Nobody was supposed to get hurt. Bremmer...the others...” He shook his head. His eyes were already growing hot. Not good. Focus. He flexed his fingers, intensifying the pangs that were sounding further up his arm. “None of those things were supposed to happen.” None of them would have happened, if he’d just kept silent three years ago instead of trying to be cute.

“You didn’t know they’d be armed?”

“Not _that_ armed, no.” A couple of guns wouldn’t have surprised him, since three of the men were moving high-value stock and the other four had shown up to challenge their operation, but all seven drug runners had been carrying. It was an unusual concentration of firepower for around Kembleford. “I thought it would just be a few quick and easy arrests. Some punches thrown, maybe, but not...not what it turned out to be.”

“There were a lot more of them than I would have expected.” Sullivan had leaned his head back against the crest of his chair and was staring up towards the dark ceiling. There was no examination in his tone; they were simply having a chat, as if Sullivan wasn’t a policeman and Sid wasn’t the mostly reformed petty criminal he preferred to target above all others.

“Though Goodfellow must have been expecting it,” Sullivan mused on, “since he called out so many of the men. Half of that lot were supposed to be off this evening. So thank you for that, too, since whatever clued him in that tonight wasn’t a market-variety bootlegging must have come from you. It would probably have been much worse for our side if he’d only had one or two others with him.”

_Don’t thank me_ balanced on the tip of Sid’s tongue. He hadn’t saved any lives tonight, but had instead been responsible for the loss of four. Turning down the Inspector’s gratitude, though, would spiral them straight into the hard truth that Sid was so urgently trying to keep under wraps. He set his teacup on the side table, jolting his bad arm on purpose in the process. Christ, it hurt, but the hurt helped. “It wasn’t meant to be a set-up.”

“Obviously,” came a mild reply. It was followed by a sardonic smile. “Or rather, it wasn’t meant to be a set-up for the police.”

“Right.”

“And those men are people you know, who would know you? I assume that’s why you didn’t want to be seen by them.”

He’d known the group that was handling product tonight, but he only knew of the others. “Not all of them, no. I don't touch drugs. The ones I know-” no, he corrected himself silently, the ones he’d _known,_ it had to be past tense now that two of his acquaintances were dead “-didn’t used to do this sort of stuff, either. They were new to it.”

“Hmm. Well, that would explain why it was such a large group, if the more experienced movers were training the newer ones. Though the Sergeant said they’d already started firing on one another when he and the men arrived, so that’s rather odd...”

Just like earlier, back in the woods, there was no suspicion of Sid in Sullivan’s tone. Why, though? How was it that the voice Sid had never been addressed by without suspicion or annoyance before was so utterly free of both tonight? Was this just the Inspector’s poorly calibrated emotional mixing valve at work again? It usually jerked over into full boil when he ran hot, but for the last hour it had been settled in a perfect warm zone. Sid wanted to soak in it, to let it ease the tightness in his muscles and wash away the ickiness he felt coated in. Giving up just a little more information might keep things going, and let him do exactly that...

No. Revealing that tonight’s catch had consisted of two separate sets of smugglers, not just one big one, would make it too obvious that he knew much more than he was letting on. Sullivan would figure the group dynamics out on his own as part of his investigation.

But then, wouldn’t he start to put other things together, too? He knew that Sid was the one who’d called the police, and that he’d made sure Sergeant Goodfellow thought it best to bring extra men. He knew that Sid had been on the scene. He knew that Sid had known what was being moved.

It was already too late. Everything was going to come out, everything he’d had to do with it, everything he’d needed to make up for tonight. And when it did, Sullivan’s attitude towards him would shift straight into Arctic territory. Permanently.

That inevitability didn’t mean that Sid wasn’t going to scramble for every extra second of good relations that he could get, though. He needed to say something in response to the Inspector’s comment; he’d been silent for too long. But how could he speak when the very thought of opening his mouth made him want to vomit up the whole truth and then plead, grovel – hell, prostrate himself on the rug, if necessary – for forgiveness?

Sid surreptitiously pressed his right thumb down against the bandage below his left elbow. He had to rein in a flinch, but the confession that had been pushing against his lips backed off. “Yeah,” he managed. “Right.”

Sullivan shook his head. “Heroin. In _Kembleford.”_ He met Sid’s gaze then, and this time when he smiled there was no salt in it. “I said you’d have to have a good reason to risk your reputation. Closing a heroin trafficking route is one of the best ones I can imagine.”

“...Yeah. Reasons don’t get much better than that, I guess.” Except, of course, when there was guilt stacked on top of them. Sid pressed his thumb down again, harder this time.

Too hard. He gasped as he felt wetness blossom. Oh, no. No. This was bad, bad, very very bad. For the second time tonight, an attempt he’d made to keep control of a dicey situation had backfired horribly. _Fuck._

There was never a chance that Sullivan would miss his reaction. The same worry that had been in his eyes when he’d broken the teacup now spread over his entire face. He sat up in his chair and set his replacement cup aside. “Sid, what-?” His worry morphed into horror as his attention fell to where Sid’s thumb was still hovering over the spreading crimson spot it had made. “What have you done?!”

“Nothing,” Sid begged as Sullivan sat down beside him on the sofa and tugged at his arm in an effort to survey the fresh damage. This was it; it was over now. Sid felt it in his core. His usual finesse slipped away amidst his panic and left him lying like a five-year-old. “It was nothing. It was an accident. I swear. I swear, I never meant it to happen. It wasn’t...I didn’t... _please_...”

Sullivan’s stare rose from Sid’s arm to his eyes. His head tilted slightly to one side as understanding took hold. “Sid...” he repeated in the most delicate and sensitive tone that Sid had ever heard, “...what have you done?”


	4. Truth

After Sid had told him everything about tonight – and it was everything, because he’d been in no state to hold anything back once he’d started talking – Sullivan didn’t move for a long time. He was thinking over what he’d learned during the past few hours, and he always did his best thinking when he could be still and quiet.

Still and quiet, too, was the figure he’d pulled in close before more than two or three wracking sobs could shake it. Sid had collapsed against him bonelessly, either unable or (maybe, possibly, because there had been something between them when they’d been touching in the kitchen, a little frisson that Sullivan had never felt come from a purely heterosexual man) unwilling to resist his embrace. When the tears had tapered into a slow trickle and he’d been able to form words without his voice hitching, he’d explained himself. Then he’d passed out, completely drained.

Sullivan could hardly blame him. Given everything Sid had gone through tonight, the fact that he’d held onto his secrets and acted so normal for so long was remarkable. Now more than ever, he understood why the younger man’s confidentiality was valued on both sides of the legal line.

He hadn’t meant to make him cry when he’d asked him what exactly it was that he’d done. The tears had been a necessary and healing part of Sid’s revelation, Sullivan knew, but he’d still hated every single one that fell. They were something, he decided as he pulled the gray wool blanket up and tucked it carefully in, that he never wanted to see again. Miserable and hopeless were not emotions that fit well on the usually vibrant and witty man in his arms. If he had anything to say about it, they would be banished forever after tonight.

It seemed that he hadn’t been prepared for any of Sid’s mood shifts this evening. The other man’s distrust in the car was understandable in retrospect, though that fact made his stomach clench. Later, Sullivan had expected Sid to pull away when he began to wipe his hands and arms for him in the kitchen. The fact that he had softened enough by then to let it continue – to enjoy it, even, or so Sullivan hoped/prayed/believed – had been a pleasant surprise.

Their move into the sitting room had apparently distressed Sid again, however. Sullivan hadn’t caught the difference in mood because he’d been lost in his joy over the positive interactions they’d just had at the table. His rapture had been so great that he’d relaxed without even thinking about what he was doing. He had dropped his shields as if this was the thousandth, not the first, night on which he’d held Sid’s fingers tenderly in his own. That was why it had been such a shock to catch him hurting himself, to see his torment, and then to realize that there was much, much more to this evening’s debacle than had yet come out.

Now Sullivan knew that what he’d naively thought was one large group of drug smugglers had actually been two smaller rival factions. Each had run their own varieties of contraband through and around Kembleford in the past, and both were vying for control of the local sections of the heroin trade lines that were beginning to form between London, Bristol, and Birmingham. Sid, hearing through a personal grapevine that one party had a shipment tonight, had puppet-mastered some of his other connections into getting word to the second group of what their competitors were doing.

“No one knows that you were part of that chain of information, do they?” Sullivan hadn’t wanted to cut him off mid-story, but it had been a vital question. Forget about Sid’s reputation for discretion; if the wrong people so much as suspected that he’d orchestrated tonight’s police raid, it would be his life that was in danger. “They aren’t likely to put things together and trace it back to you?”

“I was careful. I covered my tracks. Not the first time I’ve been sneaky, y’know.”

“...Right. Well...good.”

He’d been careful, too, to try and keep the police from knowing who gave them their heads-up. If Sergeant Goodfellow hadn’t recognized his disguised voice on the phone, and if Constable Bremmer hadn’t been hit so close to where Sid was hiding, the police’s source would have remained anonymous forever. “But why?” Sullivan had asked, baffled. “I don’t understand that, Sid. Did...” An awful possibility occurred to him. “...Did you think I wouldn’t believe you if you came to me directly?”

“No. I figured you’d at least check on it, even coming from me. It’s a big enough concern that you’d have wanted to be sure it wasn’t real.”

_Even coming from me._ That had hurt, though Sullivan knew it was deserved. It wasn’t as if he’d ever taken Sid at his word before now, after all. “Then why did you try and do it all so secretly? You shouldn’t even have been there tonight.”

“I know. I just...I had to do it myself. I had to fix it. I had to make it right.”

“...Make what right, exactly?”

Sid hadn’t answered for a long moment. “It was something I said a long time ago,” he finally said. “To Gerry. He’s dead now. Tonight. Bloody _hell.”_ He sniffled and swiped at his eyes. Then his expression turned hard. “...I told you earlier, I don’t touch drugs. I never have. I never will. Not that I touch much these days anyway, but still. Not that.”

There was a reason for that, Sullivan was certain. He wanted to press, to know more, but he could tell that it was a very personal story. Too personal by a large measure for Sid to be willing to share it with him now. Later, maybe, in weeks or months or years...Sullivan was going to have to work on that.

“Gerry didn’t run drugs back then, either. There weren’t really opportunities for it out here like there’re starting to be now. I never pegged him as one who would start in with them if a chance did come up, though. I thought he was like me about that. We’re...we _were_...alike in a lot of ways.

“So one night we’re talking. We’d had a few, up to the caravan. We were relaxed. Gerry starts saying how he wants to get out of here, go to London. How he’s got all the local coppers figured out front-to-back, and there’s no challenge anymore, no thrill. How he loved hearing me talk about the city, and he wanted to see it for himself.

“He’d been saying that a lot, about leaving. I hated it. I didn’t want him to go. He always said I should come with him, and once upon a time I’d’ve jumped on it. But by then I’d been here a couple years. I had pretty much all the same reasons to stay as I do now. And as much as I didn’t want Gerry to go off without me, I wanted to stay in Kembleford more.

“I knew that was how I felt, but I never said it out loud. I think I realized that the pull of London was stronger than any pull I had. Gerry was only still here because I _hadn’t_ told him I didn’t want to go. He was holding out hope that he’d be able to convince me if he just kept trying.

“So I started joking around. I told him he could move all the cocaine in Columbia or bleedin’ atom bombs around the village if he wanted, because no one would be looking for them here and he was just that good. And he _was_ that good.” Nostalgic reverie entered his voice. “He knew the roads like he’d built them, and the woods like he’d been raised wild there. I only know a lot of what I know about the lay of things because he taught me his stuff after we got toget-…" His eyes darted up to Sullivan briefly, then away. “...To be friends.

“Anyway, he gave me this look when I said that, ‘cause he knew I was being cheeky. So I sobered up a little. I said he shouldn’t leave routes he knew so well, he should just start moving higher-value stuff along them. I never meant drugs,” Sid insisted, fierce again. “Or even weapons, really. I didn’t have anything in mind, in particular. I just didn’t want to ruin the evening when we’d been having such a good one up to that point.

“And it worked. He let it go. Said he’d think about it, see what he could manage. We changed the topic, went back to enjoying ourselves.

“Three days later, he was gone. No note, no goodbye, nothing. Just...into thin air.”

He sounded as if that old abandonment still hurt him. Sullivan’s throat thickened with empathy. He tightened his embrace briefly. “You were close.” That was probably an understatement – Sid's cut-off phrasing had suggested that he and Gerry were much more than just good friends – but their exact relationship status wasn’t the point right now.

Sid nodded. “Yeah. We were. Two of a kind. Pair of bad pennies, the Father used to say. Joking, of course; Gerry wasn’t half-straight like I was getting to be, but he wasn’t a bad bloke. That’s why it was so awful when he showed up on my doorstep a few weeks back and told me what he’d been doing since he left.”

What Gerry had been doing, Sid had learned, was preparing the ground for a drugs network that would span half of the county. “He’d remembered what I’d said, about moving high-risk, high-price stuff through rural areas. He said he had a bunch of different deals set up with people he’d connected with while he was in London. Some of it wasn’t so bad, but...”

“But some of it was heroin.”

“Yeah. He was really interested in that bit. Not like he was using it himself – least I don’t think he was – but in the moving. He had plans for through-trafficking, local distribution, all of it.

“He wanted me in on it. He said he needed me. And he told me about this other group, the ones who were there in the woods tonight, too. They’re part of the scene in Gloucester, and they’ve been trying to expand their base. Gerry was pissed off about them. He kept saying they were in our territory. He said...”

He swallowed hard. “...He said no one was selling heroin round here except for him and me.” Confusion, disbelief, pain in Sid’s voice. “But cor, I wasn’t gonna do that. I mean, you said it earlier. Heroin? In _Kembleford?”_ He shook his head with so much determination that the action was almost violent. “No. Not here. Not...”

Sullivan’s lips twisted wryly. “Not in _your_ territory.”

“...Yeah. Because there wasn’t an _us_ anymore, was there? It was just me. Had been, for a long time now. And I might not keep up all the lines Gerry left me, but that doesn’t mean I ignore them. I know who’s running what, on the roads and in the woods. I don’t mind most of what they do. But no one, not even Gerry, is bringing shite like that, like fucking _heroin,_ into Kembleford.” His volume had started to rise, but now it fell back into a whisper. “‘Specially not when I might have been the one who put the idea in their head to start with.”

“...So, you set up the raid.”

“So I set up the raid, and now there won’t be any heroin around here, or at least not for a while yet. The rest of the Gloucester boys’ll know you’re watching now. That’s big, because most other places’ police _aren’t_ watching. It’s no one’s fault; the drugs are just coming on so fast and so quiet-like that its gonna blindside a lot of people. Gloucester’ll find somewhere else to operate from, because right now that’s still easier than pushing back.

“And...and Gerry’s dead.” His words shook. “Gerry’s dead, and Markie Finks from over to Hambleston’s dead, and two of the Gloucester crew. And it’s all my fault.”

Sullivan frowned mightily at that. “It is _not_ your fault.”

“It is, though. I gave Gerry the idea to run high-value stuff. Then I didn’t go with him to London, so I couldn’t stop him when he started moving drugs there. When he came back, I still didn’t tell him what an idiot he was being, because I could see it wasn’t going to do any good. He was in too deep. Then, instead of going to you or the Father or anyone else, I set up the raid. I set up the raid, and they were all armed, and look what bloody happened.”

“What bloody happened,” Sullivan threw back at him, “were two unfortunate coincidences and one questionable decision. Years ago, you jokingly mentioned that Gerry could get away with smuggling hard drugs around Kembleford. Later, Gerry remembered what you’d said – what you’d said in jest, mind, when you were trying to keep him from leaving – and built dreams of a black-market empire off it. That was coincidence number one.

“When you heard about those dreams, you were rightly upset by and opposed to them. So, you set up the raid, never imagining that Gerry and all six of his associates would be armed and prepared to open fire at the slightest provocation. But they were, and they did, and that was coincidence number two.

“Those are simply things that occurred, things that you had no way of predicting or controlling the outcome of. The questionable decision _is_ on your shoulders, because you should have come to me with this information, Sid, you really should have, but the rest of it _was not your fault_.”

Sullivan heaved a sigh. “...But I do understand why you didn’t come to me, or to anyone, with this. I...I understand the desire to fix one’s own mistakes, or mistakes that you think you’ve made, without letting others know about those mistakes, and without potentially inconveniencing them or making your mistakes their concern.

“I still wish that you _had_ come to me, though. The outcome would have been more or less the same, I think – based on what you’ve told me, I believe that those two groups would have fallen upon one another wherever they next met, be it in the forest or on the High Street – but at least it wouldn’t have been such a surprise. More importantly, you wouldn’t have been there to be shot.”

Sid shrugged. “I had to make sure it went alright. That no one got away to try again. Me being shot’s not the bit that matters. ‘S not like it’s gonna kill me.”

“It’s one of the things that matter,” Sullivan snapped. “In fact, it matters quite a lot. A graze or a gutshot, Sid, I don’t like it either way.”

“I...I thought you might not mind, being honest.”

“...Might not mind what?”

“Me being shot. ‘Specially once you knew everything about tonight.”

“Jesus.” Sullivan had to bite his lip to hold back the frustrated tears that filled his eyes at those words. “...Tell me that you don’t really think so poorly of me as that.” Even if it was a lie, he almost added.

“Well not _now,_ no. And it wasn’t thinking poorly of you when I did. I mean, it’d be understandable, considering.”

“Considering _what?”_ Sullivan shook his head and tightened his grip again. “Don’t answer that. Sid, I don’t know what I ever said or did or implied to make you think that I would be anything other than horrified by the idea of you being shot, but I was clearly out of line in some way. That...just...no. I have _never..._ I couldn’t...” He reached out towards the stained bandages around Sid’s forearm and fingered the line where gauze gave way to bare skin. “I _hate_ this.”

Sid tilted his face upwards and met Sullivan’s sad and self-loathing gaze. “So you don’t hate...you know...me?”

_“No.”_

“I don’t exactly make it easy on you.”

“No, you don’t,” Sullivan agreed. "You have complicated virtually every aspect of my life since the day I set foot in this village. But I don’t hate you for that. I...I don’t even necessarily mind it. The complications.”

“That sounds...uh...complicated.”

“It _is_ complicated. Too complicated for tonight,” Sullivan had gone on as Sid yawned, “because you are exhausted, as you have every right to be. I’ll still drop you off somewhere, the presbytery or Montague House, if you want me to. It’s nearly two in the morning, though; it might be easier if you just slept here.”

“Here’s fine,” Sid had answered after the briefest of pauses. His eyelids drooped closed. “Here’s...comfortable.”

By ‘here,’ Sullivan hadn’t exactly meant on his shoulder. Even asking Sid to stay had been a gamble, though, and he was hardly going to protest the double win of a sleepover with cuddles. But their last words had been exchanged quite some time ago, and his arm was beginning to go numb. “...Sid?”

“Mm...” He nuzzled deeper into the shadows cast by the collar of Sullivan’s shirt, but didn’t open his eyes.

Mere hours earlier, Sullivan marveled, the man he was holding had hesitated to take a blanket from his hands. Now he was digging in against him as if only his body heat would do for warmth. That level of adaptability was something Sullivan envied, admired, and in their current context, was deeply grateful for. “If you can make it up the stairs and into bed,” he went on, “I promise I won’t make you get up when I do. That's in three hours, in case you were wondering.”

“Ugh...” Sid’s lashes fluttered as he dragged himself back to wakefulness. “...‘Sit ever occurred to you, Inspector, that going to bed early enough to get up with the sun means you miss some of the best hours of the day?”

“We have a special word in English for those particular hours you’re talking about. We call them ‘night.’”

“Oh, that’s clever.” He was still pale, and the graffiti of fatigue hadn’t even begun to fade from his face, but Sid was smiling. “Think you’re pretty cute, do you?”

The little moments of galvanizing contact they’d shared earlier, combined with the fact that Sid had lain in his arms for nearly two hours straight without ever hinting that he wanted to move away, emboldened Sullivan’s tongue. “Don’t _you?”_

He expected Sid to stiffen at the clear subtext of that question, at least for a moment. But he didn’t. “...I know a lawyer’d tell me not to answer that,” he said instead. “Least not if it was a policeman asking. But I don’t think you’re asking me as one of those.”

The air between them was suddenly charged. “I’m...I’m not.”

“You’re asking me as a man?”

“...Yes.”

“Then whoever you’ve been with in the past didn’t do their job, because if they had you’d already know you’re a fair bit more than just ‘cute.’”

Sullivan gulped. Sid’s gaze hadn’t wavered; he’d meant every word he said. “Listen...I know tonight has been...complicated...but...could I...?” He underlined Sid’s mouth with one thumb, unable to actually say the words.

“Yeah, you should probably get on it,” Sid murmured. “Kiss me, then take me to bed. Like you said, you’ve only got three hours before you have to get up. ‘S not much time.”

He didn’t think he’d ever even spent that long under the same covers with another man before. When he imagined that the other man was Sid, the three hours that would have been luxurious with anyone else felt like the blink of an eye. “...No,” Sullivan replied as he bent in. “It really isn’t...”


	5. Intimacy

After Sullivan’s alarm went off, Sid kept his eyes closed and let his other senses tell him what was going on.

They were both still partially clothed, because despite their bit of banter in the sitting room they’d been too tired to do anything other than strip down to their underthings and share a few more gentle, probing kisses before sleep overtook them. At some point after Sid’s memories ended, Sullivan had apparently slipped a pillow beneath his wounded arm in a sweet attempt to keep it elevated and safe from accidental jarring. Now, having silenced the alarm, the Inspector’s fingers made a brief tour of his ostensibly slumbering visage, brushing his hair back from his forehead, stroking along one eyebrow, tracing his jawline, caressing his lips.

Other lips there, then, just for a moment, and in their wake Sid’s nose got to work. Fresh linen came first, because of course Sullivan was the sort who would change his sheets two or three times a week even if he hadn’t done anything to dirty them. Then there was the scent of the Inspector’s sleep-warmed skin, a mild blend of bergamot and black liquorice and roasted sage. Whatever it was that he used for aftershave had mostly worn off, but a hint of olive and honey lingered and joined the other fragrances to make a blissful buffet.

A sharper, more vital smell intruded as Sullivan’s hand slid down to Sid’s propped-up arm and began to unwind the bandages. “Shh,” he breathed when the gauze caught a little and Sid gave an involuntary twitch. “Don’t wake up, I only want to glance at it...”

Such gentleness in his careful unwrapping, gentleness that Sid hadn’t imagined Sullivan was capable of until they’d been sitting together at the kitchen table last night. Between the soft touch he’d been hiding and the sharp mind he displayed at every possible opportunity, he might have made quite a fine doctor. The only hitch, Sid nearly smirked, would be getting him to treat the patients like something other than murder suspects.

If he treated them all like he was currently treating Sid, though, his services would be in impossibly high demand. “Don’t move,” he whispered as he positioned the bared limb back on its cushion. “I’ll be right back.” The mattress hardly shifted, so careful was Sullivan in the way he crawled off it. Then came the faint sigh of footsteps on the rug, the nearly silent _click_ of the bedroom door being opened, and a single distant creak as he made his way downstairs.

Sid finally opened his eyes. He hadn’t looked around the room the night before, because interior decoration was well below sleep and sex on his list of interests at even the best of times, but he did so now. The furniture was decent, built of good wood rather than the cheap, flimsy pressboard that had flooded the market in recent years. However, both the surfaces and the walls seemed to be bereft of personal touches. Small hints in past conversations and the presence of the book beside his armchair downstairs proved that Sullivan cared about things other than his work, so he was left to interpret the lack of personalization as an unspoken intention to not stay in Kembleford any longer than necessary. Well, Sid was just going to have to work on that...

There was a heating grate in the floor beside the bed. As Sid noticed it, a disembodied voice rose from its depths. By straining his ears, he could almost make out what Sullivan was saying. He seemed to be on the phone, because there was no second voice to be heard, and unless Sid was very much mistaken, the Inspector was calling out of work. That, he thought with a satisfied grin, was probably one for the record books.

“...I was trying not to wake you,” Sullivan lamented when he reappeared bearing a fresh roll of gauze and a glass of water.

“‘Salright,” Sid yawned. “I don’t mind, since you’ve got time to come back to bed now.”

Sullivan’s gaze fell to the heating grate. “You could hear my conversation?”

“Not clearly, but I know what skiving off sounds like.”

“Now there's a surprise,” came drolly back. Sullivan sat down on the edge of the bed, then swung his feet in so that he was sitting cross-legged at Sid’s side. “Here, take these pills. They won’t help much – as I said, I only keep aspirin in the house – but your arm must be sore.”

“Yeah. It is.” Sid sat up, then winced as the ache below his elbow intensified. “...And now it _really_ is.”

“Blood rush?”

“Yeah. Hate that feeling.”

The aspirin was pressed into his good hand, followed by the glass of water a moment later. “Better?” came an anxious inquiry as soon as he’d swallowed.

“Well not yet,” Sid chuckled. “Takes a second or two, you know. But it will be,” he added when Sullivan grimaced at his cheeky reply. “It’ll be fine. So stop worrying.”

“You should know that I’m highly unlikely to do that.” Faint color rose into the Inspector’s cheeks. “I worried enough about you before. I can’t imagine my worrying will lessen now that we’re...well...whatever it is that we are now.”

“Is that why you kept arresting me?” Sid joked. “Not because I was actually in trouble, but ‘cause you were worried I'd get into some if you didn’t keep me looking over my shoulder?”

Sullivan’s expression grew considering. “...Possibly. I’m not sure, to be honest with you. I meant it last night when I said that you have been complicating every aspect of my life. I...I’ve struggled with this for quite a while now, Sid. With you. With wanting to be with you. I suppose it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I’ve been having a crisis of conscience almost since I arrived in Kembleford. The truth is, I’ve never been attracted to someone with your sort of history, even in a superficial manner. It’s been...difficult...for me to reconcile your past with my own.”

“...Oh.” Sid frowned. It didn’t sound like Sullivan was trying to undo any of the wild advancements they’d made in the past few hours – it seemed a safe bet that the other man would have put more clothes on before he ventured down that particular road – but everything was still so new and tentative that a quiver of fear ran through him anyway. “You...you managed it, though, right?”

“Yes. I did. Last night went a long way towards resolving my conflictions.”

“Sounds barmy, that. I mean, I believe you, but I really thought you’d despise me if you found out everything.” Sid nodded down at his wounded arm. “Was this that upsetting, or what?”

Sullivan glared at him. “Of _course_ it was upsetting! It’s _still_ upsetting! And it had better never, _ever_ happen again!”

The anger drained from his face as quickly as it had appeared. “...But it was more than just the fact that you could have been killed,” he admitted. “It was also what you’d done. Tipping us off at the risk of your reputation, assisting Constable Bremmer...those things were revelatory. Then, when you told me why you’d set last night up to begin with...your guilt, and your desire to undo this thing that you felt was your fault, to protect this town and its people...well, suffice it to say that I now thoroughly understand why Father Brown doesn’t consider you a hopeless case.”

“No one’s a hopeless case to him, being fair,” said Sid. “But...I’m glad you didn’t react the way I thought you would. I’m glad about,” he gestured between them, “this. I like it. A lot. And,” he added with a laugh, “I like finally knowing the real reason why you were being so bleedin’ nice to me.”

He remembered how austere Sullivan had seemed to be when he’d first approached him in the clearing. Knowing what kinds of feelings had been tangled up behind that cool exterior made the other man’s mien even more awesome in retrospect. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with the Inspector’s emotional mixing valve, after all; maybe he was just remarkably skilled at hiding the nuances in his reactions to things. Whether that was simply good police training or a habit brought on by events earlier in his life, Sid didn‘t know. But he was looking forward to finding out. “You can keep doing that, by the way. Being nice to me.”

“I fully intend to.” Sullivan gazed at him for the space of several breaths, his eyes inscrutable. Then a tiny and apologetic smile unfurled across his lips. “I’m afraid that wrapping your arm again isn’t going to feel very nice, though.”

Sid made a face. “Yeah. But I’m not stupid enough to try and argue with you about doing it, so...”

“No, you would absolutely lose that argument.” He reached for Sid’s arm. “At least the aspirin should have had time to start taking effect...”

Partway through his work, Sullivan spoke again. “I do wonder that you want to be with me, given our history. The fact that you thought I hated you, or could hate you, and would be glad to see you shot is not a promising beginning for any relationship.”

“I’ve wanted you for ages,” Sid confessed. “Took me a little while to get there, because you’re right, it seemed off to want the person who kept accusing me of things I hadn’t done and chucking me into police cells, but...it was how I felt. You don’t last long in this world, least in my experience, if you ignore how you feel. And sometimes you can't explain a feeling – it just _is,_ and that’s it. So, once I let myself want what I wanted, it pretty much all became about how you felt.

“Which, like you said, I thought was pretty negative up to last night. Then I was sure you’d _start_ hating me if you knew why everything yesterday happened the way it did, and...well...”

“...Oh, Sid.” Sullivan’s tone was sorrowful. “Is that why you hurt yourself? Because you were trying not to tell me?”

“Yeah. I mean, I wanted to tell someone – needed to, really – but _you?_ I thought it would ruin everything if you knew. The pain helped me keep it inside a little longer. I...I didn’t figure it would all come around like it has.”

Sullivan had finished wrapping his arm. “...But it did,” he said, looking up. He wore the same small smile as before, but the apology in it had been replaced with a hopeful happiness.

Sid had never thought of the Inspector as anything short of handsome, but he hadn’t realized how gorgeous a smile like that one could make him. “Yeah,” he said, reflecting the expression with boyish glee. “It did. And so we’re here, and you’ve skived off work, and I don’t have to be anywhere until this afternoon, and I dunno about you, but I’m still _so_ bloody tired...”

They lay down together, their legs tangled, foreheads almost touching. The need to keep Sid’s arm propped up prevented Sullivan from holding him properly, but they laced their fingers together as a substitute. “What time do you have to be ready for Lady Felicia?” the Inspector asked. “I assume you have work later?”

“Yeah. Dinner and a ball. Why, what were you thinking?” It would be dangerous for Sid to come here too often, especially at night. He could always cozy up the caravan with his tiny kerosene heater, but he tended to hear about it from three different directions when it was cold enough out, like it was now, that he had to leave the thing on while he slept. Best not to even mention that option unless he wanted to add a fourth voice to the ‘have you lost your mind, you might never wake up’ chorus.

“Nothing brilliant,” Sullivan replied ruefully. “Only that I said I’d be in by noon, and now I wish I’d taken the whole day, heroin in the woods or none.” He stretched past Sid and retrieved his alarm. “I’m setting this for ten. That leaves ample time for me to get ready, and it should provide you with enough to get yourself down to the clinic and have your arm looked at before you have to think about work.” He paused. “...Will you even be able to drive with that?”

“I think so.” Sid flexed his hand and winced. “It’s not gonna be joyful, but tonight’s isn’t a far-off do.”

“Maybe _you_ should call out,” Sullivan frowned.

“Nah. Lady F.’d let me have time – she'll probably insist on it once she hears what happened – but it’s short notice to drop her for this evening.” Speaking of Lady F., and of Mrs. M., too... “I’d rather nobody else knew about last night. The reason I was there. I know you have to put something in your records, but...maybe I was just passing through? Wrong place, wrong time kind of thing?”

Sullivan’s eyebrows rose. “Are you asking me to falsify a report?”

There was more amusement than upset in his question. “Could think of it more like protecting your source,” Sid suggested. “So long as the lads find the drugs, the tip-off being officially anonymous and me just being an unlucky bystander won’t hurt your case any. Right?”

“You’re not wrong.” His eyes flickered over Sid’s face, studying it. “...And you’re certainly a source worth protecting.”

They fell into a long, slow spate of kissing that only ended when they started wanting something more. “We’ll hurt your arm,” Sullivan chastised gently as he pulled back a few inches. “There will be time for that later. Other days.”

“...Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Still holding hands, they let their eyes close. “...Sid?”

“Mm-hmm?”

“What about Father Brown?”

“Mm.” Sid smiled. “He doesn’t care about stuff like this, so long as people are happy. Anyway, he likes you.”

“No, I meant what about him and last night?”

Sid’s smile reversed direction. “D’you mean will I tell him everything I told you?”

“Yes.” A beat passed. “...I think you should. As much as I like the idea of having a secret of yours to myself, he’ll probably put half of the story together as soon as the rumor mill starts up. And you said he knew Gerry. Don’t you think it would be best if he heard about his death from you?”

“Yeah...” The concerned crow’s feet that had been aimed in his direction so often of late rose to the front of Sid’s mind. “I’ll tell him. Like you said, he‘ll figure most of it for himself before the day’s out. And he’ll be looking for me anyway if he hears Gerry’s name from someone else.”

“You and Gerry...you almost said it last night, Sid, and I think I already know the answer, but were you two...together?”

“Yeah. We were. I only stopped before I said as much because...well, I guess I still wasn‘t sure about you. I was still waiting for you to hate me, or hate me more, or something. Would’ve been stupid to hand you even more ammunition than I already was just by telling you the story, and doubly stupid to let you know what we were at the caravan to do that night.”

Sullivan squeezed Sid’s hand. “I’m sorry he died,” he said, plainly, honestly.

“Thanks. But you didn’t kill him. And no,” he added as Sullivan’s mouth tightened, “I’m not gonna say ‘I did.’ I know you’d disagree. Anyway...maybe I’m starting to believe you about that.” Maybe, and only a little bit, but it was something.

“Good.” That thin vertical line appeared between the Inspector’s eyebrows again. “Did...did you love him? No, never mind, I’m sorry, that’s too personal-”

“It’s not,” Sid stopped Sullivan’s rescindment. “It’s...it’s alright. I did love him, I think. We’d been together over a year when he left. When he just...”

“Vanished.”

“Yeah. Vanished. I don’t love him anymore, of course. I mean, I do, but not...it was the past. It’s well over, and has been. Like I said, there hasn’t been an ‘us’ in a long time.”

“...I don’t generally speak ill of the dead,” Sullivan stated in the same flat voice he’d addressed Sid with back in the clearing, “but your Gerry was a fool.”

Sid gave a soft, self-deprecating chuckle. “Maybe. But maybe you’ll feel the opposite a year from now. And I don’t mean about the heroin trade.”

“Obviously,” said Sullivan, and rolled his eyes. “But to tell you the truth, Sid, I...I don’t think I will. Feel the opposite, I mean.”

Oh, he wanted to believe that. “I had no idea you were such an optimist,” he jested, trying to keep his face from betraying the bright flare of hope those words had ignited in his chest.

“I’m not, as you well know. I have no rationale for that belief. It’s just how I feel. And sometimes,” Sullivan echoed Sid’s earlier words softly, “you can't explain a feeling – it just is, and that’s it. Don’t you _dare_ cry,” he half-begged, half-ordered as Sid’s lips trembled. “You’re not allowed to do that anymore. I decided last night.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” He couldn’t help but laugh. “No crying and no getting shot, those are the rules?”

“Well, not all of them. I’m sure I’ll come up with others as we go along.”

“Mm. Alright, then.” Sid let his eyes drift closed again. With one sense dampened, he found that he could feel the gentle stirring of the air between himself and Sullivan as they breathed, first separately, then, slowly, in sync. A question swelled in his mouth – _promise, promise me more rules, more worry, more love?_ – but he swallowed it down. There would be time for all of those things, he felt as he tumbled over the edge and into sleep, after.


End file.
